


Kill Your Darlings

by GracieinaNovel



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: AU, If You Squint - Freeform, Post-Finale, Season 3 Finale, Spoilers, Spoilers for 3.06, Stragan - Freeform, because wow that ending, ending rewrite, headcanons included
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 21:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12661341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GracieinaNovel/pseuds/GracieinaNovel
Summary: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR 3.06.In which the end wasn't really the end, or at least not in the way they wanted you to believe.A rewrite type continuation of the finale, because some things just can't be left unsaid.





	Kill Your Darlings

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD FOR 3.06. FINAL WARNING FOLKS. DON'T READ IT IF YOU DON'T KNOW!
> 
> Ok, now that's done, this is a very hastily written rewrite/ continuation of the finale ending, because of course it is. I am mad/sad as I am sure lots of people are, but this little headcannon was making me less sad about it all so I figured putting it out there might help others see past the single episode for the hypothetical future of our favourite demon denouncing duo. 
> 
> There might be errors, as I have written then posted with only a small amount of editing. I may go back and change these when I have had a night to sleep on it, but for the ideas alone I needed to get them out there, so have at it folks! Please do let me know what you think, or in general just to talk/rant about the finale in general!
> 
> I don't own the rights to the Black Tapes Podcast, or any characters. These headcanons are mine but are meant for the masses :)

Two tickets. Two options. Two weary faces not breaking eye contact as they said the lines.

Of course that hadn’t been the end.

It needed to be. Oh god with the threats and the phone calls and _that_ video, it needed to be the end more than either of them could ever say.

But it wasn’t, because they were both in Strand’s living room, Alex cross-legged next to the coffee table and Strand with his hands tensed in his lap on the sofa, staring each other down as they let the recorder hear their magnum opus.

The ultimatum was their way out.

Not in the way that the podcast listeners would hear, even though that idea grew ever more tempting each time one of them fumbled, or coughed when their throats dried out with nerves, or that one time a book fell over and their hearts jumped so much they had to stop altogether till a good part of the bottle of wine was in their systems. No, the ultimatum was their way out in the way a flashbang hides a magician.

The podcast had gotten too noticeable. Of course Alex knew that, as did Nic and the office and every one of the blogs that talked about it, recommending it to more and more eager listeners as the plot wove on. But noticeable in the charts was not noticeable to the kinds of people filming the presenter sleeping at night, and now that both those types of ‘publicity’ had merged, the podcast had gone from an interesting medium of discovering the truth, to an intrinsical part of the mystery, and one that was proving ever more dangerous.

Kill your darlings, Steven King had said. And so Alex was killing her podcast, rushing to a conclusion that wasn’t satisfying but was final; anything to let her and Strand and Nic and everyone else tangled up in its strings fade into the shadows that so often haunted their movements.

Nic had helped, because of course Nic had known.

It had been weird speaking to a script. Obviously they had scripted the podcast, choosing the best words and just the right amount of tension to keep people clinging on. But this was different. This was fake words and fake emotions, over fake skype calls and fake confrontations.

Nic had been surprisingly good at it. Alex had rushed through her lines to get the taste of the lies off her tongue.

The evidence had been real of course. The video from her bedroom, the message for Strand, the call with Simon. All very real and very terrifying, terrifying enough for a course of action so beyond the mark of overstepped ethics it was almost laughable if it wasn’t so sad.

What the podcast hadn’t mentioned, what it appeared the whole conspiratorial lot of them would take to the grave, was that all of this evidence had arrived a week previously, and every conversation in 3.06 had been drafted in the seven days that had followed.

Of all the moments, the one between Strand and Alex had been the worst.

Or Richard, as she supposed he now was. Richard and Reagan lying through their teeth and not quite admitting the truth that tempted their tongues every time they stuttered through the speeches.

 That final line had been awkward beyond measure. Awkward because if it had been happening, if this was The Conversation, of eloping and nuanced feelings, then surely they would have been less than five feet apart. There also probably wouldn’t have been a table in the way, or the small mound of the nixed versions of this, their final episode. The recorder probably wouldn’t have been there either. Probably.

But they had managed it. Managed it with enough of a dramatic pause to put any Telenova fade to black to shame. Managed it with grim determination engrained in their frowns and Alex’s hiccup sigh as she turned the recorder off and slumped in defeat.

They had managed it because they had to, for more reasons than one.

  1. They needed the ambiguity. Maybe this would turn out better than planned. Maybe there could be a Black Tapes: Resolved episode in their future. The ‘ending’ needed to allow for this, but also for the complete opposite. If Tiamat or Warren or the Order of the Ceonophus were really listening, combined as one or as three equally terrifying separate entities, the scripted final bows needed to be vague enough to give them no clues, on anything.



 

  1. As much as they both hated to admit, or at least cringed their way through admitting while inwardly feel their pulse quickening with the nerves of something hidden being revealed, a romantic angle between them could serve a purpose as well. It could convince the audience that they were happy, or lovesick enough to no longer be considering reason. That could justify a sudden exit. Possibly. With their three pronged cult problem too, if they or it thought that the people getting uncomfortably close to the truth were too busy getting comfortably closer to each other, maybe they’d step off the ball. Maybe. And almost certainly: if they hinted at more of an attachment than the slight sparks in their guts, perhaps it would coax Coralee out of the woodwork, if or where or what she is now.



(Richard seemed to think this one would work. Alex hadn’t questioned it – didn’t have enough energy to add potential ex-wife attachments to the list of things in her emotional docket.)

  1. The final reason was the kicker, the elephant in the room of this whole endeavour. They had to kill the show, lying and betraying and disappointing in the process, because they really had no other choice.



Alex had argued that one at first. Surely they could make it work, use the show as the accountability that whatever forces they were up against lacked. Use her words, their words to bring it down by the pressure of a universal knowledge, of the truth being outed at last. Strand had argued her down gently, even his pragmatism not facing up against the fear and sadness in her eyes.

This thing, this whole endeavour could end one of two ways.

Either they follow the steps apparently mapped out by generations before them, and the apocalypse or at the very least their deaths comes as a result. Or they somehow stop it, and life keeps moving forward.

The snag in option two though, it was a large one.

Whoever they were up against, be it Warren, or a mysterious order, or some kind of mix in the middle, there was no way one podcast sponsored by socks and stamp companies could come out victorious. Not with Strand’s help, or Nic’s, or his mysterious hacking friend or the entire office, plucky interns included.

It just couldn’t happen. Mysterious cults weren’t accountable to governments. You couldn’t just arrest the perpetrators and consider it resolved. Even if by some miracle Alex got Strand to admit to something paranormal going on, one sceptic and a recorder touting radio host couldn’t do much against it.

The Black Tapes Podcast couldn’t fix the mess it had stumbled into.

But maybe, just maybe, Alex and Richard could.

Not alone, of course. They would be calling in favours. Favours from Ruby, from Amalia if she’d answer, from Simon (Strand was still less impressed about this part). From every professor in a relevant subject that either one of them could blag their way into talking to. And yes it wouldn’t be as easy to investigate now, without the guise of a small scale documentary from a well-loved radio network as their cover.

But they might be able to scrape by, hopping about wherever the threads take them, all the while trying desperately to avoid getting caught up again in the strings to the point of choking. Really they had no choice either way.

So yes they were going to Geneva. Not straight away, but they were going. And yes Bulgaria would be getting a visitation too, as would Victoria (again), and Chicago, and New England, and even The Sagamore if they thought they could get in unnoticed. Hell, maybe this new version of the Black Tapes investigation would even take them back to that little strip mall come mental hospital, all those years ago, where for Alex at least, this had all begun.

Where it would not take them was back to the studio. Not soon anyway, and certainly not soon enough to properly edit and mix the episode the way a final hurrah had the rights to be.

Instead the final episode was edited on Strand’s living room floor, with their meagre cases stacked in the hall and the man himself methodically shredding anything non-essential in a mess of whirring and Alex’s tapping and maybe a little too much sniffling for either one of them to deny the emotions in the air.

But then it was done. Rushed, yes. Disappointing, most probably. But it was done, and sent to Nic with a thousand more apologies, and then the cases were in their hands and they were standing on Strand’s drive.

“Alex,” He had said.

“We’ve decided, Richard,” She responds shakily. “Now where do we go?”


End file.
